


Slow Wash

by Anythingtoasted



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bunker Fic, Fallen Castiel, M/M, Men of Letters Headquarters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-27
Updated: 2013-06-27
Packaged: 2017-12-16 09:17:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/860482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anythingtoasted/pseuds/Anythingtoasted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>swimming pool MoL fic for Alwaysokaykingofokay ♥</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slow Wash

“Where the fuck is Cas?” is one question Dean hoped he’d never have to ask again, but here he is; wandering down the hallways of the Men of Letters headquarters at eleven fucking thirty at night.

He and Sam came back later than they’d expected from  a hunt, leaving Castiel behind. Castiel pretends not to mind, most of the time, but the lie is stupidly easy to spot; he shrugs, he folds his arms, he wanders away; there’s a twitch to his mouth that he can’t quite hide, and even though Sam had a heart to heart with him,  _insisting_ that he wasn’t useless, Dean knows that he feels it.

Fact of the matter is, though, that at the moment life beyond the bunker – hunting, shooting, all that shit – is just that little beyond Castiel’s reach, just that little bit  _much_ for him to deal with. Bodily, he is fine; he exercises, he eats, he bathes (with proper coercion) – but the first time he left the bunker for groceries he got flushed, warm all over, and dropped dead away in the middle of the fucking store, transfixed by the halogen lights above. He hasn’t explained the incident, gets quiet and angry if prompted, but Sam thinks it’s something to do with Falling, and Dean is inclined to agree.

To be honest, between them, they’ve decided just to let it lie; they’ll gradually bring him out into the world, hope it’s not too much for him, and ease him into it at his own pace. Castiel was fine, if a little jumpy, the second time he went shopping; but that small victory aside, for the moment, hunting is resolutely  _out._ No matter how much of a tantrum he throws about being left behind.

Getting back, the bunker was quiet. This is no surprise; Castiel sleeps often,  _particularly_ when he’s feeling moody, and has been known to sequester himself in his room for hours at a time, meditating or writing about how angry he is in his diary, or jerking off, or _something;_ they’re not sure. Either way, he always comes out eventually.

But the door to Castiel’s room was swung wide open, the room empty, and despite Sam’s protests, Dean is a little worried – either that he’s left them, or been  _taken_ from them somehow. Despite the fact that Castiel has been pretty definitively grounded, Dean can’t shake that little niggling fear; that he’ll leave, that he’ll get beamed up again without so much as a goodbye. What passes between them these days has slowly been growing warmer, even with all this trouble surrounding it, and Dean wants it to keep going; is cautious of its sudden, inevitable end.

He’s in some unrecognisable corner of the bunker; a narrow hallway he doesn’t recognise (it’s fucking  _amazing_ how deep this place goes); and he hears it. The sharp, unmistakeable noise of water slapping on stone.

He stills, for a moment; then inhales, and smells chlorine; follows the noise down the hallways, to where a door hangs ajar, and the noise is louder.

He pushes it open carefully; for one crazy moment (maybe he’s a little sleep deprived) he thinks  _Nessie!_ – and then he is standing in the open doorway and looking into a moderately sized swimming pool, with a naked fallen angel floating lazily in its centre.

“Cas?” he calls, carefully, for his eyes are closed, his bare legs and arms spread out over the surface of the water. Castiel blinks (dean’s breathing returns to normal) and lifts his head.

“Oh.” He says, anticlimactic as ever. “You’re back. How was Oklahoma?”

“Same old.” Dean mutters, carefully looking at his face, rather than…elsewhere. It’s not like Dean’s never seen him naked before – you live with a guy, you get to know him pretty well in ways you never really thought you would – but this is different. This isn’t walking in on him in the shower by accident, or peeling off his shirt to inspect a wound; this isn’t clinical, isn’t funny. Castiel looks entirely at peace, hair wet, and he drifts for a moment before he shifts in the water and drops from his starfish float to bob horizontally in the water, lower half of his body obscured by the pool.

He treads water to the tiled rim of the pool, and looks up at Dean with his forearms resting on the side, guileless. Dean can’t help it; he smiles.

“We have a pool?”

“Ever observant, Dean.”

“Huh.” Dean looks it up and down; the tiles outside of the pool are clean, the water clean, as well; either the Men of Letters had some kind of futuristic water-filter system or there’s some  _serious_ glamour at work, but to his surprise, Dean finds that he doesn’t really care; a swimming pool is a rare treat to him and his brother, has been since they were kids, and Dean remembers long evenings spent by the sides of motel pools, waiting for the staff to finish skimming discarded band-aids and leaf-debris from its surface until he and his brother could jump in uninterrupted, speaking in whispers, seeing how long they could hold their breaths. He remembers the ink-black water, lights from the motel rooms glinting off the surface; the white-plastic patio furniture always positioned around the sides, so cheap and light they’d skitter across the floor and into the pool whenever the wind picked up.

It was the closest thing he ever really got to a holiday, while his dad was alive, and looking at it now, the rush of nostalgia is so strong it almost knocks him over. He looks at Castiel, who is gazing at him curiously from in the water.

“Is it warm?” he asks, and Castiel shrugs his shoulders.

“It’s fine.”

“Yeah?” Dean toes the edge, then makes his choice; he strips his shirt off in one movement, tugs off his jeans, peels his socks from his road-weary feet and lets them flop onto the damp tile floor by the edge of the pool. He leaves his underwear on, in lieu of a bathing suit, suddenly aware of Castiel’s comparative nakedness; then decides he really, _really_ doesn’t care.

He sits on the edge of the pool, and Castiel looks at him as he dips his feet in the water and hisses from the cold. “S’freezing!” he says, sounding more scandalised than he really is, and he could swear that Castiel laughs – he looks at him. “Better to just go ahead and jump, right?”

“So I’ve heard.” Castiel shoots back, easy, languid, and Dean wonders many hours he’s been in here, floating. He looks more peaceful than Dean’s seen him in  _weeks._

He stands, bends his knees by the edge of the pool, feels his resolve just  _briefly_ slip, and jumps in feet-first, plunging below the water, sinking entirely to the bottom before kicking up to the surface again. He can swim, and swim  _well,_ but he never gets the chance to, and for a moment he’s surprised by it; the clog of chlorine in his nostrils, the heady thrum of water around his ears, the cold. When he breaks the surface of the water again, Castiel is looking at him, and smiling.

“This is fucking amazing.” He says, and Castiel grins even wider.

“I like it.” He says simply, and Dean nods and kicks up to lay on his back, looking up at the ceiling; it’s plain, nothing much to talk about; tan tiles, like the rest of the place’s general ‘theme’; all dark mahogany and autumn shades, like they’re living in someone’s hunting lodge – not that he’s complaining.

It’s unprecedented, how much better it makes him feel. For a moment he feels everything of the day; the sweat, the dirt, the exhaustion; bleed away into the water, leaving through his skin like the pool is washing it clear. The white-noise rush of water around his ears is like whalesong.

He drifts for a while, hearing the gentle splash of Castiel most likely doing the same, and then rights himself and pushes through the water to the side. He’s not sure why he does it,  _exactly,_ but he pulls himself out of the pool and sits on the edge with his legs dangling, just watching Castiel float peacefully, expression entirely placid.

He makes it a couple of minutes before Castiel says, emphatically, “ _Dean.”_ And he laughs, embarrassed.

“Sorry.”

Castiel leans his head up to look at him, squinting. “Are you bored?”

“No.” he says, and it’s the truth. Castiel huffs a laugh.

“You’re being strange.” He says, words pushing themselves, amused, out of his mouth. He flips over and swims over to the side, beside Dean, and pulls himself up to sit beside him. He moves, naked, just the same as he does normally; totally sure, totally  _together,_ in a way that Dean almost never is. His hands are wet, and they brush Dean’s elbow; Dean becomes suddenly,  _painfully_ aware of the cling of his wet boxers around his thighs. Castiel looks out onto the surface of the water, swinging his legs, splashing gently.

“This is nice.” He breathes, and Dean grins.

“I like it too. Sorta relaxing.”

“Mm.” Castiel says quietly, and looks at him; his eyes travel Dean’s torso pointedly, and then he lifts them to meet Dean’s gaze, and smiles that soft, chiding little smile of his. “We should get back.” He says, surprising Dean, and he blinks.

“We don’t have to. If you don’t want, I mean.” Something about being in the room with all this water, the smell, thethings it reminds him of, is making his brain sortof mushy and strange. He wants, with a very definite sort of wanting, to touch Castiel’s water-beaded skin with his hands. He doesn’t know where to start.

At a loss, instead he talks. “How long have you been down here, anyway?”

Castiel shrugs. “I lost track of time. A few hours. Maybe longer.”

“Must be nice.”

Castiel laughs, then frowns. “I’d rather have been with you and Sam.”

“I know.” Dean replies, and doesn’t push about it; this is the way things are,  _have_ to be, and Castiel understands. It’s alright if he complains, if he rages, as long as he doesn’t _leave._ “It’s nice, though. Coming home to you.”

Castiel looks at him funny. “Dean, I’m  _insufferable.”_

Dean shrugs. “Sure, but so am I.” he feels Castiel’s wet fingers close around his wrist, and stills. He looks at Castiel, doesn’t know what to say. “You’re okay, though, right?” He asks, and has wanted to, for a long time. “You’re mostly happy?”

“As happy as I can be.” Castiel says, and it’s bittersweet, but he’ll take it. Castiel’s skin is pruney, but warm.

He slips out of Castiel’s grip to get into the water again, and just swims around; does half a length, floats on his back for a bit; goes under the water, eyes open, to search for hidden treasure on the bottom. Eventually Castiel slips in to join him, and for a while they just swimalongside each other, Castiel matching him stroke for stroke, hair plastered to his forehead, water dripping down his face, around his ears. His eyelashes stick together, black, in messy little clumps.

They climb out at about two-thirty in the fucking morning, and Dean half-heartedly towels himself dry with his own shirt; laughs at the picture that Castiel makes, flushed from the water, the change in temperature. He throws him his shirt so he can half-heartedly pat himself dry as well, then steps close and musses his hair with a hand, prompting a withering look from Castiel.

The pool echoes, but is otherwise quiet, and with his hand still in Castiel’s hair he hears the steady cadence of the room. Castiel steps forward from under that hand to kiss him; deep, and slow.

There’s the wet-slap of their feet on the tiles, the way Castiel half-slips, and laughs, and grabs Dean around his arm at the same instant that Dean tries to catch him.

The water in the pool is silent, motionless, but around it the noise is abundant; a steady drip of water from the hem of his boxers onto the tiles; the strange, slow echo of Dean’s hitched breath between their parted lips.

In the end, they decide to tell Sam about the pool the next day, and spend the good part of an afternoon pushing each other in before it all gets too rough and Dean bruises his head on the side; but somehow it was different, a different place the night before.

Later in the week Dean finds Castiel there again, not swimming fast but drifting slow in the water; eyes closed, and a look of peace on his face that makes Dean’s heart, his lungs, swell large and heavy in his chest. 


End file.
